2min chapter

Thoughts in Between: exploring how technology collides with politics, culture and society cover image

Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross: Talent - How to identify winners around the world

Thoughts in Between: exploring how technology collides with politics, culture and society

CHAPTER

The Most Efficient Talent Market in the World

Heine: I think you have relatively efficient talent market when it's easy to measure performance, and when a very large percentage of the people who might be great at something have some chance to try their hand at it. So i actually think the market for talent in chess is quite an efficient market. For engineering, it knows, an interesting one where there's such a thirst suffor engineers now that you don't need a harpof decree to get hired. You just need a few commits to an open source code base.

00:00
Speaker 3
One of the other things i take from the book though, is that you should always ask, when might this statement not be true? And o there's a lot of that in the book, which is, which is great. So what o you think of the most efficient talent markets in the world? Where where do you think like the talent that's attracted and astead of rank, if you like, by outcomes, is most likely to resemble the underlying distribution of talent? I
Speaker 2
think you have relatively efficient talent market when it's easy to measure performance, and when a very large percentage of the people who might be great at something have some chance to try their hand at it. So i actually think the market for talent in chess is quite an efficient market. Not that everyone learns the rules of chess, but at least in a fair number of nations, enough kids do. And then they can learn more in the internet. And if you're good at chess, it's relatively easy to see, and you win game s and you're promoted in the system, so to speak. So if someone says to me, well, magnus carleton actually is the greatest chess player of all time, even contingently or modily, i'm inclined to believe them. So that's an example of where things have gone well. But it's also an exceptional example because it requires a lot of assumptions that don't usually holde,
Speaker 3
maybe sprinting or something like that. It's very likely that if you're actually going to be better than you, sam botwit cover that. But again, pretty weird market. Heine.
Speaker 1
Any situation where the work can be quantitatively evaluated and the quantitative metric is actually truly reflective of ability, i think you have an efficient market. So sales, traditionally, is what you see in the enterprise, is usually pretty efficient. I mean, the topsales people at farmer companies and consulting firms are very good. They look the part, they talk the part. And that happens naturally, because ultimately everyone's getting evaluated on this numerical number, you know, how much of ther quota they had. Am and sow. For engineering, it knows, an interesting one where it kindof is better than most fields, likes a traditional management and thinks the most difficult but like you you can kind of tell now, some one's body of work a from, you know, wt wat the code that they write on line. And a and i think, you know, to the extent of the am, upper education and institutions in disintermediated get up is probably the largest disintermediating authority where there's such a thirst suffor engineers now that you don't need a harpof decree to get hired. You just need a few commits to an open source code base.

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